Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick may be forced to testify to Congress after suggesting that Jeffrey Epstein secured a sweetheart plea deal by blackmailing people with compromising videos.
Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said he would support a plan to subpoena Lutnick, a close ally of Donald Trump, following his bombshell claims that the pedophile financier used a sordid massage room in his New York mansion to become the “greatest blackmailer ever.”
“Those were some incredible comments, and I think that it just reinforces why it’s so important that we get the full files released by the DOJ and the Trump administration,” Garcia told CNN’s OutFront with Erin Burnett.
“And quite frankly, after those comments by Mr. Lutnick, we need to speak to him in front of the entire Oversight Committee. We’re very interested in understanding what exactly he knows and where those theories come from,” Garcia added. “Anyone, particularly if you’re in the Trump administration, making those comments so freely—you have to believe they have additional information, and we’re going to follow up.”
Garcia shared a clip of his CNN interview on X while describing Lutnick’s claims as “explosive.”
Speaking on the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast, Lutnick, a billionaire financier who lived next to Epstein before he was exposed as a pedophile, described how Epstein gave him and his wife a tour of his Manhattan townhouse, which featured a massage table as its centerpiece.
“I say to him, ‘Massage table in the middle of your house? How often do you have a massage?’” Lutnick recalled. “And he says, ‘Every day.’ And then he gets, like, weirdly close to me, and he says, ‘And the right kind of massage.’”
Lutnick claimed that some of Epstein’s wealthy and powerful associates would have received massages from young women and girls at Epstein’s home, and that the encounters were filmed for blackmail purposes.
“They get a massage, that’s what his M.O. was. ‘Get a massage, get a massage,’ and what happened in that massage room, I assume, was on video,” Lutnick said. “This guy was the greatest blackmailer ever. That’s how he had money.”
He went on to suggest this was how Epstein managed to secure a controversial 2008 plea deal that allowed him to avoid federal sex trafficking charges.
Instead, Epstein pleaded guilty to lesser state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution, receiving an 18-month sentence. He was permitted to go on “work release” to his office while in custody and was released after only 13 months.
“He’s a serial sex offender. How could he get 18 months and be able to go to his office during the day and have visitors and stuff? There must have been a trade,” Lutnick said.
“So, my assumption—I have no knowledge, but my assumption—is there was a trade for the videos, because there were people on those videos.”
Lutnick’s remarks directly contradict the DOJ and FBI’s assessment that there is “no credible evidence” Epstein blackmailed people or kept an incriminating “client list” containing high-profile associates.
FBI Director Kash Patel also testified in September that there is “no credible information” Epstein trafficked young women to anyone besides himself, a claim which was widely condemned.
“I would 100 percent support a subpoena for Lutnick. I’m certainly going to be following up on this,” Garcia told CNN.
The Daily Beast has contacted Lutnick’s office for comment.
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